Song of Solomon (7:11) with slight change is going to be the theme of the campaign of the DMK for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The song “Come, my beloved, let us go the countryside ..” has been slightly altered to suit the changed situation. “Let us go to the people, Let us speak to the people, Let us win the hearts of the people” would be party chief Stalin's theme song of the campaign for DMK’s 2019 Lok Sabha election. DMK leaders will tour all the villages in the State and will leave no stones un-turned in the run up to the 2019 election.
This was announced by M K Stalin, party president, after a day-long meeting with the district level office bearers and constituencies-in-charge of the DMK on Monday. Though the election Commission has not announced the schedule of the Lok Sabha polls, the DMK would launch the massive outreach programme on January 3 , 2019 from Thiruvarur, the home constituency of late M Karunanidhi, the party’s former president who breathed his last in August his year.
The assembly election 2016 has seen Stalin, who was the then working president of the party leading “We For Ourselves” campaign in which he interacted with people in all the 234 assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu. Though the DMK could not unseat the ruling AIADMK from power, the party put up a spirited fight and won 89 seats.
Stalin plans to relaunch the outreach programme from where he left it in 2016. But this time, party leaders too would chip in because it is difficult for the partry leader himself to attend the Grama Sabha like meetings planned in all the 12,617 panchayaths in the State.
The outreach programme has been announced immediately after Stalin’s interaction with bishops and priests of various denominations of the Church held at Tiruchirappalli last Saturday. Though staged as a Christmas gala , the bishops and priests assured Stalin the full support of the community in the upcoming elections.
“Office bearers of the party has been allocated districts in which they have to undertake the outreach the programme. We have been asked to speak to the villagers, make them speak about their problems and inform them about the action programme Stalin has prepared to resolve their issues,” said K S Radhakrishnan, spokesman of the DMK.
Interestingly, the DMK chief is upset over the lack of support for his call to project Rahul Gandhi as the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Opposition for the upcoming parliamentary election. He wrote a lengthy letter to the party cadre explaining the reasons for his announcement and assured them that all the opposition parties would fall in line after the election to endorse his call. His efforts to be a modern day Karunanidhi has come a cropper and Stalin is upset over the cool response from his own party leaders,” said G Sathyamurthy, columnist and political commentator.
The outreach programme has been announced at a time when the ruling AIADMK is fast disintegrating itself due to infightings. In Sunday, a party meeting convened at Thoothukudi by Kadambur C Raju, the publicity minister had to be called off following scuffles between various faction leaders in the district in the presence of the minister.
Stalin accused Prime Minister Modi of playing the role of peace maker between chief minister Edappadi Palaniswamy and his deputy O Panneerselvan. “This is being done to facilitate the formation of a BJP-AIADMK alliance in Tamil Nadu,” alleged Stalin after Monday’s meeting.